40. chatwin

17
To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries: to lose a notebook was a catastrophe. (The Songlines) Bruce Chatwin (1940- 1989) Bruce Chatwin.

Upload: carlo-borionetti

Post on 20-May-2015

833 views

Category:

Education


1 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: 40. chatwin

To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries: to lose a notebook was a catastrophe.(The Songlines)

Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989)Bruce Chatwin.

Page 2: 40. chatwin

• Born in Sheffield in 1940.

• Spent much of the War in a

nomadic drift from one lodging to

another.

• At the age of four, he went to stay

with his great aunts Janie and

Gracie at Stratford-upon-Avon.

1. Life

Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin

Only Connect ... New Directions

Page 3: 40. chatwin

Bruce Chatwin

• Aunt Gracie read him poetry from an

anthology called The Open Road,

through which he discovered “the

strident, beckoning music of Walt

Whitman”.

• Aunt Janie, who was a reader of

modern fiction, introduced Bruce to

Hemingway, his acknowledged

mentor in prose style.Bruce Chatwin

Only Connect ... New Directions

1. Life

Page 4: 40. chatwin

• Attended Marlborough College and

developed a passion for antiques,

becoming a precocious collector.

• At fifteen acquired a copy of a classic

travel book, The Road to Oxiana

(1937) by Robert Byron, which he raised

to the status of a sacred text.

• In December 1958 started to work at the

London fine art auctioneers, Sotheby

and Co. of Bond Street.

Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin

Only Connect ... New Directions

1. Life

Page 5: 40. chatwin

• In 1973 was offered a job as a

freelance contributor to “The Sunday

Times Magazine”.

• Announced his departure with a

telegram: “Gone to Patagonia for six

months”.

• This trip was to result two years later

in a travel book, In Patagonia (1978).

Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin

Only Connect ... New Directions

1. Life

Page 6: 40. chatwin

• Four other books followed. The Viceroy of Ouidah, 1980On The Black Hill, 1982The Songlines, 1987Utz, 1988What Am I Doing Here, 1989

• Was diagnosed as HIV positive, died on 18 January 1989.

• Anatomy of Restlessness published posthumous in 1996.

Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin

Only Connect ... New Directions

1. Life

Page 7: 40. chatwin

• 97 sections.

• Invisible narrator.

• Description of the land, its history and people.

• Concise statements of location and time.

Bruce Chatwin

2. In Patagonia (1978)

Patagonia

Only Connect ... New Directions

Page 8: 40. chatwin

Bruce Chatwin

• Descriptions appealing to all senses.

• Quotations from outside the

text to provide authority and to offer differing perspectives and draw a connection between what he writes and the experience that he praises.

Patagonia

Only Connect ... New Directions

2. In Patagonia (1978)

Page 9: 40. chatwin

• The journey.

• The fascination with pre-historic cultures and exile.

• Nomadism and human restlessness.

• The community of Welsh exiles who led solitary and eccentric lives at the margins of society the symbol of the freedom of man to be what he chooses to be.

Bruce Chatwin

3. In Patagonia: themes

Only Connect ... New Directions

Page 10: 40. chatwin

My reason for coming

to Australia was to try

to learn for myself,

and not from other

men’s books, what a

Songline was – and

how it worked.

(The Songlines)

Bruce Chatwin

Ayer’s Rock (Uluru), Australia

4. The Songlines (1987)

Only Connect ... New Directions

Page 11: 40. chatwin

ABORIGENS

The songlines are a labyrinth of invisible pathways which stretch to every corner of Australia. Aboriginal creation myths tell of the legendary totemic ancestors – part animal, part man – who create themselves and then set out on immense journeys across the continent, singing the name of everything that crosses their path and so singing the world into existence.

Bruce Chatwin

4. The Songlines (1987)

Australian Aboriginal

Only Connect ... New Directions

Page 12: 40. chatwin

Two parts

Bruce’s and Arkady’s journey following the songlines

From the Notebooks: presents quotations that influenced Chatwin and longer descriptions of his encounters with anonymous desert wanderers and famous thinkers.

Bruce Chatwin

5. The structure of the book

Only Connect ... New Directions

Page 13: 40. chatwin

BRUCE THE NARRATOR

Arkady Volchok a 33-year-old Russian-Australian with a

double function in the book:

1) A mouthpiece for the thoughts of Chatwin himself.

2) Bruce’s guide into the mysteries of the songlines.

“The Aboriginals [..] were a people who trod lightly over the earth; and the less they took from the earth, the less they had to give in

return [...] The wars of the twentieth century are the price for having taken too much”

Bruce Chatwin

6. The Songlines (1987)

Only Connect ... New Directions

Page 14: 40. chatwin

DREAMTIME Part of aboriginal culture which explains the origins and culture of the land and its people. Dreamtime is Aboriginal Religion and Culture.

Bruce Chatwin

Cover for the first edition of The Songlines.

Only Connect ... New Directions

6. The Songlines (1987)

Page 15: 40. chatwin

Bruce Chatwin

CREATION Everything in the natural world is a symbolic footprint of the metaphysical beings whose actions created our world. As with a seed, the power of an earthly location is wedded to the memory of its origin. “Ancestor Spirits” came to Earth in human and other forms and the land, the plants and animals were given their form as we know them today.

Only Connect ... New Directions

Cover for the first edition of The Songlines.

6. The Songlines (1987)

Page 16: 40. chatwin

Once their work was done, the Ancestor Spirits changed again; into animals or stars or hills or other objects. For Indigenous Australians, the past is still alive and vital today and will remain so into the future. The Ancestor Spirits and their powers have not gone, they are present in the forms into which they changed at the end of the “Dreamtime” or “Dreaming”, as the stories tell.

Bruce Chatwin

Cover for the first edition of The Songlines.

Only Connect ... New Directions

6. The Songlines (1987)

Page 17: 40. chatwin

• The journey.

• Nomadic life.

• Criticism of western materialism.

• The rights of the aboriginals.

Bruce Chatwin

7. The Songlines: themes

Ayer’s Rock (Uluru), Australia

Only Connect ... New Directions